The Next Day...

[gonegrl]

Pho
I am laughing to myself thinking about what I did in the months before I started here. We should start a thread just posting what we did!

Otw- the name of that thread for me would be "A lesson in self humiliation." Those were some bad days!

[otw]

I just look back and shake my head at myself.

[mahhhty]

I am thinking about the line "being someone's second choice has consequences" and what that might mean literally. Sometimes I need a 2x4. The consequences I think are that I should detach. That I shouldn't be too easy. Not in a game playing way, but in an honest way.

I'm no expert.... But this is what I think...

Being someone's 2nd choice, comes from a place of no respect, attraction, etc (RE: Coach's comment on Fire). Being a second choice means there is no fire.

I think Being someone's second choice means they put in less. Which, because a relationship is like a seesaw, means the other person puts in more. Consequence we push them away.

[mahhhty]

Pho
I am laughing to myself thinking about what I did in the months before I started here. We should start a thread just posting what we did!

Otw- the name of that thread for me would be "A lesson in self humiliation." Those were some bad days!

I just look back and shake my head at myself.

Yep. SMH. I sang in the shower. I tried to be overly happy.

[mahhhty]

Had a great morning interaction with X-SIL and X-MIL. X-SIL's kids where there. They love me.

Time to roll up my sleeves. No kids this weekend. So will use the next 2.5 days to demo my space... and go kayaking each day after we finish!!!!

[Georgia Bulldogs]

Consequence we push them away.

This phrase presumes way too much power over a wayward wife. She's already pulled away about as far a spouse can pull away from another so it's not a matter of them pulling away when you push, it's more akin to you trying to pull them back and them just avoiding and resenting the effort. Just because they resist the effort doesn't mean it's stupid to even try.


Consider, when a person jumps off a boat and you throw them a floatation device that they proceed to swim away from choosing instead to let themselves drown, was it a mistake to have thrown the floatation device? Now, perhaps, at some point throwing more floatation devices at a person unwilling to help themselves out of a dangerous situation is pointless and actually emotionally harmful to the person wasting all that energy and effort trying to save a person that doesn't want to be saved. There's also guilt to be measured, how would you feel thereafter had you thrown 0, 1, 2 up to 100 floatation devices? I imagine one would feel pretty crappy about choosing to not throw any just because the person drowning said "don't bother, I feel like drowning today", however, throwing 100 floatation devices may also make one feel guilty for wasting effort and resources trying to save a person that refused to be saved. A guilt of over investment in an outcome you can't control and never could.


My contention, NOT pursuing a wayward wife at all, in most instances, completely supports the wayward wife's rationalizations and justification. You confirm, you didn't care if she cheated, you didn't love her, you don't love her and you're actually OK with the situation. You didn't care enough to fight for her (and OM is telling her he would never do that). When you initially go crazy, begging, pursuing and being a complete fool trying to "win" her back after discovery day she pulls away and/or gets upset because you are NOT behaving in the manner her brain has chosen to rationalize HER behavior to cheat. Mostly, your upset, desperate and erratic behavior interferes with her primary [addictive puppy love hormone inducing] relationship with OM. In other words, her lack of response isn't because YOU aren't attractive. It isn't about you. It's about OM.

FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. Ephesians 5:31

2 thoughts on this scripture:

1. If we are "one flesh" with out spouse is it not completely understandable that we betrayed spouse go a little nuts and pursue the loss of our own flesh? That we don't just walk away acting like we don't care when someone cuts off a piece of us?

2. Even though our wayward spouse FEELS like we are second choice, are we really or are we and do we remain first choice for our spouse's in the eyes of the Lord? Like Eleanor Roosevelt once said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent". A decade ago my wife FELT OM was her 1st choice but now she'd tell you she was delusional in Sin and that I am and always was 1st choice. What is the truth? Are FEELINGS alone truth?

I mean we take vows to one another to love each other in good times and bad, sickness and health. So although our spouse's FEELING like they might love another person more than you is a pretty horrible circumstance wouldn't/couldn't it also be considered one of those "bad times" that we vowed to love them anyway? Is my behavior ruled by my wayward wife's FEELINGS, or my vows to love her regardless of FEELINGS? If so, what does love look like there. I don't think it's loving to just let your spouse, your flesh, walk away making the biggest mistake of their lives, without a fight. Tough love would hold them accountable for their behavior. Consistently, I don't think it's loving to keep pursing them forever in the face of repeated, consistent and firm rebuff. At some point you love them enough to let them go, while attending to the wounds inflicted upon yourself losing your own flesh.

Further, I think betrayed husband's should pursue harder and longer than betrayed wives for two reasons:

1. wayward wives almost always rationalize their adultery with notions of feeling or actually being mostly neglected in their marriages, so if you ignore, act happy about or otherwise act like you don't care that they are cheating you are actually enabling the affair by seemingly being uncaring and "neglectful" in her wayward eyes. The WW will be downright ecstatic because OM will like it too. He can keep sleeping with your wife and not have to bother with the sneaking around or lying anymore and he doesn't have to worry that some "crazy" betrayed husband is going to pop up somewhere and beat him up.

2. Wayward husbands generally love their OW AND their wife/family and are much more likely to respond to "distancing" GAL behaviors by the betrayed wife. They are much more likely to feel entitled to keeping both relationships going until they decide to prioritize one over the other. As long as both the OW and the BW allow him NOT to decide, he won't. When the BW pulls away, GAL's, 180's, distances herself for her own emotional protection she leaves her WH with only one relationship, the OW, to meet all his emotional needs as well as the perception that his wife is moving on. OW's are typically incapable of meeting all the emotional needs of a delusional entitled wayward husband for very long and hopefully the affair dies and the husband comes begging back for another chance at the marriage before the betrayed wife has moved on.


This is essentially the 180 plan and the last resort technique applied a little differently for betrayed men versus betrayed wives.


Last thought - I have personally referenced the 5 stages of grief many times. In particularly, I seem to often observe the "anger" & "depression" phases in infidelity recovery situations occurring 5-9 months after the trauma or more particularly about 5-9 months after the crisis is over (and the adrenal gland just stops pumping out adrenaline for the betrayed spouse). The betrayed spouses' become very agitated and start expressing their frustrations of the last year while also crashing emotionally and physically. Mad and Exhausted. I refer them to medical doctors for short term anti-depressants. But I've come to also learn that the trauma and associated with infidelity and betrayal is much more complex and individual than the model suggests. I know betrayed spouses still in "anger" and "depression" 20 years post affair. So at some point years ago I researched a little bit and discovered that in scientific circles the Kubler-Ross stages of grief has been mostly debunked. There is no evidence that most people most of the time go through these stages in this or any order. A quick search and I came up with a decent article about it that may be informational. Michael Shermer, columnist in American Scientific and publisher of Skeptic, in his article "Stage Fright" writes:

....

Nevertheless, the urge to compress the complexities of life into neat and tidy stages is irresistible. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud insisted that we moved through five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Developmental psychologist Erik H. Erikson countered with eight stages: trust vs. mistrust (infant); autonomy vs. doubt (toddler); initiative vs. guilt (preschooler); industry vs. inferiority (school-age period); identity vs. role confusion (adolescent); intimacy vs. isolation (young adult); generativity vs. stagnation (middle age); and integrity vs. despair (older adult). Harvard University psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg postulated that our moral development progresses through six stages: parental punishment, selfish hedonism, peer pressure, law and order, social contract and principled conscience.

Why stages? We are pattern-seeking, storytelling primates trying to make sense of an often chaotic and unpredictable world. A stage theory works in a manner similar to a species-classification heuristic or an evolutionary-sequence schema. Stages also fit well into a chronological sequence where stories have set narrative patterns. Stage theories “impose order on chaos, offer predictability over uncertainty, and optimism over despair,” explained social psychologist Carol Tavris, author of The Mismeasure of Woman (Touchstone, 1993) and co-author, with Elliot Aronson, of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) (Harcourt, 2007), in an interview with me. “One appeal of stage theories is that they tell a story — they give us a narrative to live by (‘you feel this now, but soon…’). In cognitive psychology and also in ‘narrative psychotherapy,’ there has been a lot of work on the importance of storytelling. Some therapists now make this idea explicit, helping clients change a negative, self-defeating narrative (‘look at all I suffered’) into a positive one (‘I not only survived but triumphed’).” What’s wrong with stages? First, Tavris noted, “in developmental psychology, the notion of predictable life stages is toast. Those stage theories reflected a time when most people marched through life predictably: marrying at an early age; then having children when young; then work, work, work; then maybe a midlife crisis; then retirement; then death. Those ‘passages’ theories evaporated with changing social and economic conditions that blew the predictability of our lives to hell.”

Second, Tavris continued, “is the guilt and pressure the theories impose on people who are not feeling what they think they should. This is why consumers of any kind of psychotherapy or posttraumatic intervention that promulgates the notion of ‘inevitable’ stages should be skeptical and cautious.”

Stages are stories that may be true for the storyteller, but that does not make them valid for the narrative known as science.

[gonegrl]

GB, that was helpful. I think I am in the "crashing" period you referred to, and if I don't feel better after my H leaves for his job in January, I will go to my dr. for antidepressants. I have been busy with GAL, 180, etc, but I am physically and mentally exhausted.

I was wondering what your take was on my situation. I know it is long and I don't want to hijack Mahhhty's thread, but my big issues are that my H has aligned himself with his parents against me and also has a dysfunctional relationship with our daughter age 14. Last year she had a "breakdown" and was acting out violently, H couldn't deal with her rejection of him and her issues (it was really bad and he thought I was choosing her over him, I understand why he felt that way but I was just a very desperate overwhelmed mother dealing with a suicidal 13 year old ), which drove him to an EA, and then the EA encouraged him to open up to his parents who told him it was all my fault, they have always hated me, I have destroyed his life and theirs........ my story is pretty complicated. But I am wondering if you get a chance to stop by my thread and give me your take on family of origin issues and the issues between my H and our daughter. It's ok if its too big of a topic to take on!

[mahhhty]

Pho - I don't mind any sort of hijack.

GB - I'll try to split this into three areas...

Consequence we push them away.

This phrase presumes way too much power over a wayward wife....

My comment was in light of an ongoing relationship. Not at all applicable to me. But I did find it interesting.

My contention, NOT pursuing a wayward wife at all, in most instances, completely supports the wayward wife's rationalizations and justification. You confirm, you didn't care if she cheated, you didn't love her, you don't love her and you're actually OK with the situation. You didn't care enough to fight for her (and OM is telling her he would never do that). When you initially go crazy, begging, pursuing and being a complete fool trying to "win" her back after discovery day she pulls away and/or gets upset because you are NOT behaving in the manner her brain has chosen to rationalize HER behavior to cheat. Mostly, your upset, desperate and erratic behavior interferes with her primary [addictive puppy love hormone inducing] relationship with OM. In other words, her lack of response isn't because YOU aren't attractive. It isn't about you. It's about OM.

I feel as if we have had a similar conversations. X is a non-confrontation, super passive, stubborn little lady, who shuts down when pushed and holds grudges, she DOES NOT talk about how she feels. She has NO friends outside of work, that are just her friends. If not for work friends, which now includes OM, she would just be hanging out with her family only.

I have often felt that withdrawing from a withdrawn woman, will not help. I also have felt that being withdrawn (which I was due to frequent travel) is a major reason we are in this situation, so the 180 would be to not be withdrawn. I have tried various methods to break through. And I am at a loss.

I mean we take vows to one another to love each other in good times and bad, sickness and health. So although our spouse's FEELING like they might love another person more than you is a pretty horrible circumstance wouldn't/couldn't it also be considered one of those "bad times" that we vowed to love them anyway? Is my behavior ruled by my wayward wife's FEELINGS, or my vows to love her regardless of FEELINGS? If so, what does love look like there. I don't think it's loving to just let your spouse, your flesh, walk away making the biggest mistake of their lives, without a fight. Tough love would hold them accountable for their behavior. Consistently, I don't think it's loving to keep pursing them forever in the face of repeated, consistent and firm rebuff. At some point you love them enough to let them go, while attending to the wounds inflicted upon yourself losing your own flesh.

I don't think many can play the "For Better or Worse Card" as much as I have tried to. I agree (and my letter identifies so) that I believe we failed our vows and our children. I'm open to trying anything (as I think I've proved) but I have no idea, how to turn this around besides doing LRT and just focusing on me.

Your post seems as if you expect me to rally. Rally back, don't give up, give it my best. Man... I'm honestly at a loss of what I could possibly do. I'm not giving up and I do have faith. But I'm confident I don't know how to get there from here. So perhaps moving on is the only thing for me.

[mahhhty]

Slightly depressing previous post... but here is some Coach knowledge for you.

I have a small, very solid core of people who I consider to be my friends. If any one of them betrayed my trust, or stuck a knife in my back, they would be off the friend list. Gone. It's just that simple.

Yep that's what seperates fear from love - trust. That faith that the other has my best interest at heart. Faith, you need it to believe. Believing is stronger that feeling or thinking.
So you need trust in your own actions, what I am doing is good for me regardless of the outcome.
That get's to Thinkers point of having confidence (loving yourself) enougth to be fearless. So the idea of being friends is to restablish the trust thru your actions.
The WAS has felt and is as hurt as the LBS is. We dehumanise them by using words like - script, WAS, fog, MLCers, cake-eaters. Not all of their behavior is honorable at times but we married a person who we vowed to love, honor and cherish througth sickness and health.
As a DBer you are called to lead thru this time. That is honorable, strong, loving, and wise.
People will let you down, we will be filled with doubt and feel forsaken. Faith is a simple idea but hard to put into practice. Forgiveness is a powerful weapon in the love arsenal. If you ever had to ask for forgiveness and then receive it then you get the power of it. I wouldn't be so quick to just check a fellow human off my list.
My W showed me a funny cartoon just yesterday. A woman was at the Pearly Gates and St Peter says to her, "You never colored outside the lines but you sure talked about everyone else when they did."
Cheers

[Georgia Bulldogs]

Nooooo....I was just having a general DB marital recovery strategy discussion. I'm not suggesting you do any of that. You've made your position clear. I wish you'd have discovered her affair early on and you could have fought a battle with full knowledge of the entire battle field. I forget, were you the guy I posted to saying that I bet her affair is with someone at work that was either married or his career would be hurt if the affair was revealed? I think that was before Cadet was a mod and my posts would sometimes take days to get through.

I agree that your 180 plan was to be NOT neglectful and I so appreciate seeing you say that. I usually see it presented here to a begging chasing betrayed husband as they need to 180 THAT behavior, and yes, to a point begging is counterproductive but for most men the full 180 isn't "act like you are fine with what they are doing" because that's just a continuation of their prior uncaring behavior. To ignore them hoping they somehow will end up chasing you is just not how men and woman ever interact. Men pursue the objects of their affections.